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What is in a name?

For today’s entry I went back to a post I made on Facebook nearly a year ago. I remember how something had been said on the radio and it had got me thinking about the name Nimrod. This is what I posted back then:

“Up until Bugs Bunny, the name Nimrod meant mighty hunter (Genesis 10:8,9) when Bugs called Elmer Fudd a Nimrod people took it to mean a buffoon or idiot; he was making fun of Elmer but not trying to change the meaning of the word. Now Satan is a real Nimrod, a mighty hunter, and not some buffoon (1 Peter 5:8) and he knows that the best hunter wears the best camouflage. Even if it means changing the meaning of a name to an insult just to trick his prey into thinking he ain’t nothing to worry about.”

You see Bugs was making fun of the fact that Elmer wasn’t all that great at hunting. He was using sarcasm. The trouble was that it went over the heads of so many people because by the time this cartoon came out Bible teaching was in a steep decline. Had the the cartoon been available in the 1800’s people might would have better understood Bugs’ sarcasm.

When we get away from teaching the Bible we loose so much of the meaning of everything else that we have. For example science doesn’t contradict the Bible it backs it up. But with without true Bible teaching we accept theories as true and forget the truth.

Also leaving behind Bible teaching means that even when we do try to read the Bible so much goes over our heads. There are a multitude of blessings and symbolism in the Bible that have been misplaced because those things have been forgotten as antiquated or out of date. Yet God chose to have those very things there in His word for us, knowing we would call them useless in our modern age.

I freely admit I read, preach, teach, and stand with the King James Version of the Bible. Why? Because the KJV is a faithful word-for-word translation. I personally want to get my messages straight. It does me no good if someone leaves me a message to meet them somewhere and the person they left the message with gives me their take on what that person meant. How do I know I have the right time and place. I am forced to assume.

However that is what the other translations do. They are a thought-for-word translation. This is what I think God meant to say. Or perhaps, This is what the word means in our modern language so I will go with that and simplify it for the masses.

Sometimes the blessing is hidden for us in the exact word. In John 20:7 the Bible reads “And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” In other versions the word “napkin” is replaced with burial cloth or shroud. Both of which are correct translations. However the blessing lies in the word “napkin”, and that is because of a custom of that day and not ours. Back then when you sat down to eat if you were done eating you would wipe your face with your napkin, crumple it, and throw it in the middle of your plate. Even if you continued to sit there everyone knew you were done eating. But if you had to get up for some reason, time for dessert, something burning in the oven, knock at the door, or whatever you would wipe your face and fold the napkin and put it off to the side of your plate. This told everyone else that no matter how long it took you would come back to finish what you had started.

When Jesus arose that day he placed the “napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.” Since it wasn’t lying on top of the rest of the cloth he had been wrapped up in, but rather placed neatly to the side Jesus was telling all of his disciples (both then and down through the years) that he isn’t done and that He is returning someday. That my friends is a blessing and hope for our future. Jesus is not dead but is alive!

For me, what is in a name is very important. And it should not be sacrificed just to make my life simpler. God commanded us to study to show ourselves approved by Him (2 Tim. 2:15) anything less is approved by that Nimrod, Satan. And that is because we have walked into his trap.